Blacks Don't Invest In Stocks and Bonds

Blacks Don't Invest In Stocks and Bonds?

During a conversation I was having with a Black young lady, when I brought up the topic of investing in stocks, she said something along the lines that, "Blacks don't believe in investing in stocks and bonds..."  Though I was somewhat perturbed by that statement about Blacks mentality towards a form of investment, I later thought to myself is there "some" truth to that because I want to write about that?  I must state it as "some" truth because I am investing in stocks, not so much bonds, and I am Black.  However, more broadly speaking, I can feel where she is coming from and the statistics in articles that I have included in my blog, "Don't Drain Your 401K For A Pension Payment" seem to support that sentiment, and generally, not only do we not invest in stocks and bonds, but not much else in any other assets either; thus, the large wealth disparity between whites and blacks.

• Blacks still far behind whites in wealth and income
• The Racial Wealth Gap: Why A Typical White Household Has 16 Times The Wealth Of A Black One 

If Blacks, on a whole, don't invest in stocks and bonds, or we don't invest in real estate, or businesses, we are simply transferring our wealth to someone else's pocket.  However, we don't need to let that continue to be the case.  We can learn to invest ourselves and teach our children how to invest as well.  I know financial literacy is not taught much, but there are websites like mine and others littered online for us to digest what we can be doing to learn.  

It Starts At Young Age

Let me give you an example of this past week, my niece was by the house and she said every time she comes by she gets from us life lessons talks, and she does, because I don't want her to say nobody told her or tried to tell her.  In this case she had just gotten some money back and she was telling me about Snap's streaks and I asked her did she like Snap as she was on it like the whole time she was at my house.  I said to her, you know you can purchase like two shares for about $17 each, only a little more than 10% of what she had and her reaction is typical for what I think it is for many blacks when it comes to investing, which is I don't think I want to do that with my money.  I know she wanted to go see the 2Pac movie and go shopping as well to spend some of her money.

Isn't this familiar, we will go spend our money on this or that brand, which is a more than likely a publicly traded company, yet if asked if we own one share of that company, the answer is probably nah, why I need to own that?  If my niece that is young can heed these life lessons early and invest a little bit over time, the power of compounding will do the rest.  Snap(SNAP) doesn't currently pay a dividend, but if she was to invest in Nike (NKE) for about $51 a share as of writing this that pays an annual dividend of 1.38% which I explained in my blog, "Stocks Basics 101 - Dividends".  Each year, she would get back approximately $0.72 per share she owns.  Now contrast that with if she owns no shares, she only gives Nike money and all she gets in return is what she paid for.

Changing Wealth Transfer Mindset One Blog at A Time

If it is one thing that I hope this blog site does, it is to educate and teach you to be comfortable and empowered to invest in real estate, stocks, bonds, options, precious metals, businesses, and people.  On my blog, I try to stress the importance of investing early and often and teaching others when we have learned ourselves.  That is how we begin to do better for ourselves and I'm sure the wealth gap will start to close.  I'm confident that if we know better that we would do better and it's a matter of retraining our psyche away from just being consumers and also thinking ownership.  The one thing that I would most like to see us shed is this urge to buy all these name brand stuff, but don't own nary a stock in those companies.  So we look rich, but aren't rich because we don't partake in the flip side to that equation of being rich through the success that company has as a result of our consumption of those products and/or services. 

Ownership Man!

Investing in stocks and bonds is about wanting ownership because when you owe share(s) of stock in Apple(AAPL), Disney(DIS), Google(GOOGL), Tesla(TSLA), and the list goes on and on you own a piece of that company, you are a owner in that company.  So, when the statement is that Blacks don't believe in investing in stocks and bonds, see in a way how that equates to saying and meaning that Blacks don't believe in ownership.  When that belief carries over, not only to stocks and bonds, but to real estate, businesses, people, and other assets, that gives a great deal of clarity on why the median wealth holding for blacks was $7,113 compared $111,146 for whites.

In Closing

The bottom line is that we got to want and take ownership in this country and to not just be its consumers.  If you don't invest in stocks and bonds; however, it is OK if you are investing in other assets, but I know of no simpler way than through stocks to partaking in ownership of some of the most profitable companies in the world.  I like Robert Kiyosaki's definition of what an asset is which is something that puts money into your pocket.  So, if the thing which you are investing in is not meeting that criteria then you should try something else, perhaps stocks and bonds.  I know that there is a good amount of money that can be made investing in the stock market over time, so I will continue to mention ways and means to use it for your benefit.  Let's start to invest and provide that kind of continuity by passing on wealth and knowledge to our heirs that we can be proud of.

You can start making small investments on platforms like the ones I mentioned in this blog:

 Investments for 2017 (Loyal3 has moved to FolioFirst)

Note: If you want to get into investing and it makes your head spin, you can follow my lead where I am investing money and purchase the below diversified motifs.

Os ETF 87/13 Allocation
Os Own What You Love

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Also, next time you think to shop at Walmart online, how about clicking through on the banner ad at the bottom of my blog site.  It will be appreciated, but also check out my blog post Loyal3 10 Stock Plan.  If you are spending money in Walmart, you should be owning it too!